As we climb, wind and dip our way west on Interstate 40 through high-walled canyons that seem in a continuous state of crumble (and are, come to think of it), we blink in and out of bright sunlight. It's rising behind us, shifting its angle and lending a continuously updated visual quality to the landscape. Every time we think we've seen it all, we cross another loping mountain peak, the sun inches a few degrees higher, and something spectacular is revealed on the other side, in a collection of hues I'd never before considered. I think of the Grand Canyon, how people say it's a completely different visual experience at different times of the day, and understand a bit more what they're talking about. The angle of sunlight affects how things look everywhere; Monet figured that out 100-plus years ago. But the effect would seem to be augmented in the desert, with its open spaces, clear, dry air and relative lack of flora.
As we rush for the Nevada border, we are descending off the Colorado Plateau into the Basin and Range province of North America. Here, the land rises and falls repeatedly as it alternates between flat valley floors and long strings of north-south running mountains that, from the air, look like ripples in the water. It is in many of these low-lying basins that communities were built, and in nearly all of them mountains are visible in every direction: a skyline feature - in places like Kingman, Laughlin/Bullhead City, and even Las Vegas - that I never grow tired of seeing.
I would think this land is gorgeous if I were on my way to visit an oncologist. Seeing it under these circumstances - free of (for the moment) worry and responsibility (as well as cancer...I can hope...), racing along at 85 miles per hour, giving even the truckers a run for their money (now it is I leaping into the left lane and racing around them) - evokes a truly kinetic manifestation of joy on this bright Sunday morning in January.
It's more than just enjoying travel, though. Lots of people like traveling, and I know full well I'm not the first to extol a) the psychological benefits of the road trip, or any trip, b) the beauty of this region. I'm not the first to gasp a little at the scenery, feel a sudden depletion of precious breath at the sight of, literally, 'purple mountain majesty', nor the first, in this age when nothing can be left to the imagination, to hoist up my phone and shoot video while driving.
"NOW WE GO BACK UP...DAMN!" - The Basin and Range province of North America is identified by land rising and falling frequently between low flat valleys and north-south running strings of mountains.
But there is something else going on, something creating an almost visceral sense of self-congratulatory satisfaction for being here, at this moment, doing what I'm doing, seeing what I'm seeing; something that transcends merely, ooh, isn't the landscape pretty.
I love being on the road. I love going places. It is a reliable inoculation from the inherent sorrow of everyday living, which has haunted me my entire life.
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From a very early age, I was at war with banality, sensitive to the emotional expression of the days, as they relate to the lives we lead, to what is ultimately the futility, and emptiness, of modern American life.
I didn't describe it that way when I was seven, of course, but I felt it, a potent despair on certain weeknights, a loudly ringing dissatisfaction for our family's daily routine. It usually hit me in the anxious moments just after dinner, when nothing exciting was happening, when my parents left the dishes until later and retired to the sofa to piddle away the evenning in front of the TV. The tinny drone of canned laughter or a commercial jingle emanating from the set was the only sound. The smell of dinner - of char, congealed fat and oily salad dressing - hung thick in the air, leaving a greasy film on hard surfaces. The dishes sat partially submerged in the sink, the water slowly dissolving smears of ketchup or clumps of mashed potato, remnants of the salad dressing floating to the top of the water, forming glinting pads of color.
To this day, Tuesday nights smell like dirty dish water to me.
Left to my own devices on these perfectly ordinary evenings, I would go to my bedroom, sit amidst a pile of toys for a while, then run back out into the living room, climb onto my mom's lap, sit there a moment or two. I'd take small sip of my mom's coffee (from a mug I still use), gag a little because it didn't taste like hot chocolate as I expected time and time again, maybe take in a small portion of whatever program they were watching (The Carol Burnett Show was a staple, that brassy horn section theme song still gives me the creeps; or a nighttime soap, or a game show...interspersed by glittering commercials for things like Colgate, or Prell, or Mitsubishi), then back to my room (by way of the kitchen, so I could walk past the dishes as one might drive past a car accident on the highway), going out of my tiny skull a little. What to do...? What to do until it's time to go to sleep...?
I've eaten.
I'm satiated.
Now what?
I've wrestled with that bottomed-out question my entire life. And I grew up in a middle class home with loving parents. I can't imagine having those kinds of feelings in a dysfunctional setting.
I became a parent myself at a young age, and that helped. I had a kid all of a sudden, I had responsibilities. I had no choice but try to embrace the everyday for his sake. I couldn't afford to be disaffected and despairing anymore; I had to engage in that proverbial fight to put food on the table, and had to do so by engaging everything. Staying sober. Staying focused. Staying on task. Striving to achieve. Setting an example.
I'm glad I had kids; I might be weird now (or even weirder) if I hadn't, embedded in some immovable 'me against the world' thinking, tilting at windmills, my indignation becoming more voracious with each passing year. Parenthood tempers angers and indignities, keeps you from taking yourself, or shit in general, too seriously.
But that old restlessness has always been there, and now there is a part of me, just that small reckless part - in a world that seems to consume empty calories, piddle evenings away in front of the TV, more than ever before - that doesn't want to take anything seriously anymore. With my kids grown and more or less on their own, I find myself once again vulnerable to those everyday blues.
I'm hardly alone. Despair is a factor in most modern lives, I'd be willing to wager. People feel it to different degrees, at different times, and more importantly, deal with it differently. Some succumb to self-destructive behavior, others to healthy pastimes they can only hope do not turn into debilitating obsessions. Some just munch contentedly on what's served up to them: their television, their movies, their video games, their myriad opportunities to consume. They probably are the lucky ones. They don't look too far ahead (or worse, too far back), they don't wonder what's out there, they don't covet what they don't have or ever feel their consumption has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I can't do that.
There is a line from the much unappreciated (at least in light of the Disney movie) novel Bambi by Felix Salten that has stayed with me for a long time, spoken to the title character by the sedge hen:
"You have to keep moving," she cried happily, "you've got to keep moving if you want to keep whole and hearty."
Whatever else 'the road' is or isn't, it is a place to keep moving.
Some people dream of being a rock star or movie starlet, or king of the world so they may influence goings-on...I dream of not influencing anything, or not feeling I have to anymore, of drifting unseen through the little moments in people's lives, as Robert Pirsig wrote in the seminal Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Practical? *sigh*...Of course not. Just a little fantasy. But man, what a fantasy. We live in a world of tightly-sewn connectedness, don't we? Fuck that. I want to disconnect, with a blank smile propelling me above the fray.
I want to live nebulously. And I can't see this being done any better than on the road.
I can't say it enough: I really needed this trip.
What we're doing now is not drifting. We are merely traveling, keeping that damnable itinerary, meeting up with people at a predetermined location. But it'll do. It's motion, it's somewhere new, and the scenery, after all, is very beautiful. Neither pictures nor movies, nor my words or videos, do this land justice.
We cruise past a green mileage sign. Los Angeles, some 300 miles away. Los Angeles! My heart races a little.
I've never been to Los Angeles.
First things first, however. We are just a few miles from the Nevada state line, a few miles from the Pacific time zone, a few miles (finally) from our destination:
Laughlin.
Where luck goes to die.
